


meddler

by lille082



Series: 007 Fest 2020 | Agent 0018 [6]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: 007 Fest 2020, Alcohol, Backstory, Fill: Ex-military Q, Fill: It's good to be bad, M/M, MI6 Cafe Prompt Table, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fill, Team 00
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25854688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lille082/pseuds/lille082
Summary: When the alcohol flows, details about Q's background come to light.
Relationships: Eve Moneypenny & Bill Tanner, James Bond & Q
Series: 007 Fest 2020 | Agent 0018 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875979
Comments: 1
Kudos: 46
Collections: 007 Fest Fancreations





	meddler

**Author's Note:**

> This fic fulfilled the “Ex-military Q” and “It’s good to be bad” squares on the Trope Prompt Table (004) by mi6-cafe

“–and there he was, looking like a little lost puppy,” Tanner said with a grin, making Moneypenny laugh with delight.

Q simply rolled his eyes and sipped at his IPA.

“Wait, I missed something,” Bond stepped up to their booth with another round, “who’s a puppy?”

“Q!” Moneypenny said brightly, turning to the boffin beside her and throwing an arm over his shoulder, her movements much looser than normal. “Our sweet puppy was put in jail–”

“When were you in jail?” Bond slipped into the booth next to Tanner, a surprised look on his face as he stared at the man across from him. He smirked. “What’d you do, jaywalk?” 

“ _I wasn’t in jail_ ,” Q hissed, just tipsy enough he didn’t bother hiding his frustration.

“No, he was about to be court-martialed,” Tanner shook his head, waving away Bond’s comments to continue his story, “keep up. So I walked in–”

“Wait, court-martialed? Why, Q, I had no idea you had it in you!” Bond laughed, leaning forward with his elbows on the table to peer at him with a newfound respect and a shit-eating grin. “Were you a bad boy, Q?”

Q exhaled forcefully but kept his annoyance to himself (he was also just tipsy enough to admit he wasn’t sure what would come out of his mouth in response to Bond’s blatant flirting). He slumped down in his seat, taking his nearly empty glass with him.

“I don’t know why I bother trying to correct you all…” he muttered, tipping his head back against Moneypenny’s arm and closing his eyes, “it’s not like accuracy is important in our line of work or anything.”

Moneypenny grinned at Tanner, kicking him underneath the table to prompt him to continue.

“So,” he said, nodding, “I walked into the holding cell and I recruited him.”

Q snorted but didn’t say anything.

“But I thought–” Bond stopped when Q opened an eye to peer at him.

“What? That I’d hacked into MI6 and left my resume on M’s desktop?”

“Well, that’s certainly the way Double-Oh Two says it went down.”

“Oh and do you believe everything you hear, Double-Oh Seven?”

“Only what I hear in the locker room and on the internet,” Bond shrugged.

Q shut his eye once more, frowning.

“Of course you do.”

Moneypenny and Tanner shared a familiar grin across the table from each other–one that said they could literally slip under the table and saunter off into the night together without either of the other men the wiser, as preoccupied as they were with one another.

She leaned against Q’s side, trying to draw him back out from his strop.

“Okay, Mr. Grumpypants, what actually happened?”

Q pursed his lips in annoyance at the name but opened his eyes and sat up straighter.

“Well, I’d say ‘recruited’ is a strong way of putting it. I was facing a court-martial and I knew I’d be found guilty because I was.” He pushed his glasses up when they started to slip down his nose. “Bill came in offering me a job instead of a dishonorable discharge and a decade in prison, said he could make the whole thing go away–it wasn’t like I would’ve turned him down.”

Tanner pointed a finger at him.

“Ah, but see, I was the one who found you and brought you in. That counts as recruiting you!”

Q rolled his eyes and Moneypenny laughed, clearly enjoying that this seemed to be a long-running argument between them.

“You were guilty?” Bond asked, voice serious.

Q stared at him with defiance in his eyes.

“Yes, I was.”

“What did you do?” Bond knew he had no place in asking and Q had no reason to deign him with an answer.

Q emptied the glass he’d been nursing and reached for his next one.

“I saved 800 lives.”

Bond snorted but his laughter trailed off when he saw the arch of Q’s eyebrow.

“Wait, you’re serious?”

“Deadly.” He said, finality in his tone. He managed to disentangle himself from Eve and stood up, excusing himself to the loo.

Bond watched him walk away, the purposeful placement of each step belying that Q was on his way to being soused. 

Tanner cleared his throat, nabbing Bond’s attention. Bill leaned in and the other two mirrored him automatically.

“I shouldn’t say anything–technically above your clearance, but yeah, that’s exactly what happened. He used to be Army Intelligence and he picked up information about an attack being planned that was supposed to be a dry run for something much larger. He brought it to his superiors but they told him to sit on the information, not pass it on to Syrian authorities so they could learn more about the group planning the attack and prevent them from cottoning on to their leak.”

He paused to take a sip of his whisky and continued.

“Didn’t sit right with him–doubt it would for anyone, really. Hours before the attack was supposed to happen, all the journalists in the area received an anonymous email warning them about it, and they alerted authorities. Managed to evacuate everyone before the bombs went off, but it still leveled a city block and a bazaar.

“No one was ever able to trace the source of the emails but people had their suspicions. A buddy of mine from back in the day is RMP now and caught wind of the whole thing, called me up.”

“Wow,” Eve said, eyes wide.

Tanner nodded sagely and they drank in silence until Q returned.

He slipped into the booth, an eyebrow raised at the sombre look on their faces. He shook his head when Tanner glanced at him, guilt etched in the lines of his face.

“Look,” Q sighed, “I’m glad it’s out in the open and everything with you lot, but can we just forget about it tonight? Sure, I was guilty but sometimes doing the wrong thing is the right thing, yeah?”

An echo of their very first conversation came to Bond as he stared at Q.

…

_“Every now and then, a trigger has to be pulled.”_

_“Or not pulled. It’s hard to know which in your pajamas.”_

…

Bond nodded and toasted the captivating and mysterious man across from him before throwing back the rest of his drink.

**Brave new world indeed.**


End file.
